Brin and Page prefer to call themselves frugal. Or careful. Whatever–it worked. When just about every other dot-com was going more than a bit nuts, the Google kids kept their focus: to become the best search engine in the world–and make a profit while doing it.
Kind of an Old Economy thing to do. But Russian-born Brin says that he’d feel weird having to tell a blind date that he’s president of an operation that’s in the red. “Sergey has this attitude that you’re not a real company unless you generate cash,” says Page.
Google also generates accolades–and users. In barely four years, it has become the Internet’s leading search engine, proc-essing 70 million queries a day with its speedy and uncannily accurate means of combing through 3 billion Web pages to find exactly what you want. “This doesn’t happen by itself,” notes Page.
It happens because Google (named after the word “googol,” signifying the very big number of one followed by a hundred goose eggs) provides a smarter way to search. When competitors’ sites were combing Web pages to see how often key words appeared, Brin and Page–two Stanford Ph.D. candidates–figured that you’d get better results from a method that took into account how sites were linked to each other. They figured right. Ads in Google are different, too: austere blocks of text that link to advertisers’ Web sites. Users click on them because the products sold are relevant to the searches. Another plus is that the site itself is a drag racer, stripped down for speed–no slow-loading graphics.
The site has even become a cultural touchstone; before a blind date, singles use it to “google” (it’s a verb!) potential matches to see if they’re (1) big shots, and (2) who they say they are. There’s even a nerdy parlor game called Google whacking, where you try to come up with a two-word search that yields a single result.
Google ’s management style is different, too. At one recent evening meal the two founders were asked if they had a “brand manager” (at a company like Yahoo such a person is the biggest of cheeses). Sergey and Larry called across the cafeteria to a guy in a checked shirt. “Hey, Doug,” asked Sergey, “are you our brand manager?” Doug considered it. “Sure,” he finally said with a what-the-hell shrug.
Don’t be fooled–between Sergey, Larry and now Schmidt (formerly of Sun and Novell), there’s a lot of deep thinking about Google’s future. They want searches to include the dark matter of the Net, those billions of pages hidden behind firewalls or offered only for a fee. And recently they started selling their first software product: a mini-Google that searches corporate intranets. Cost: $20,000 a pop. Hey, you’re not a real company unless you generate cash.
